...to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ... Ephesians 3:14-20
The kids were helping me decide who to put on our prayer sticks.
Me: I know! We can put D. on one. (Angel’s birth mom.)
Angel: (Wide-eyed) Ok!
Caleb: Who dat?
Me: D. is Angel’s birth mom.
Caleb: Mine!
Me: Sorry Bubs, I’m your birth mom.
Caleb: NOOOO. You’re my mommy.
Angel: (Laughs) Oh Caleb.
The other night at the supper table, Angel asked about her adoption. This is the first time she’s initiated conversation about it. (I wrote it down right afterwards so I would remember it word for word.)
Angel: Mom, when did I get here again?
Me: What do you mean?
Angel: (exasperated sigh) I MEAN, when did I get here in my family.
Me: Well you were born on October 24th.
Angel: In D’s tummy, right? (She knows her birth mom’s name, we just use D on the blog.)
Me: Yep, you were in D’s tummy. And then you went to Rhea’s house for a little bit. And then on December 21st me and Daddy came and got you! Just in time for Christmas!
Angel: And then I became your first children!
I know we’ll have some tough conversations in the years to come. Thankful that this first one was filled with joy and laughter!
Saturday, August 27th was Angel’s forever family day! As you know we went camping Friday but didn’t really have much planned for the rest of the weekend.
We started off our day by having donuts for breakfast! This is kind of a tradition that we do on special occasions. The donuts aren’t anything special, just your regular donut holes but the kids think it’s pretty awesome because mama usually makes them eat “healthy” cereal for breakfast.
After my horrible, no good, terrible long run we all sat down and watched Pioneer Women’s debut on the Food Network. Priorities, right? After that it was getting close to lunch and we of course allowed Angel to pick where we went.
Except she picked Chuck E. Cheese, which was the last place on earth her daddy wanted to go and so he sweetly convinced her that Pizza Ranch with the games and bouncy house was a much better idea.
Patiently waiting for her little brother to quit messing around and finish his lunch.
Finally it’s play time!
After the bouncy house and play area it was on to the games. Pat and I had already spent $10 between the two of us. Pat of course started off by shooting things. I of course won the jackpot on one of the games and won 242 tickets. Seriously, this place makes me wonder if I have a gambling problem.
We got another $10 worth of games for the kids to play. As I was helping Angel squash the ground hogs or whatever these little rodents were, I couldn’t find Caleb.
Oh there he is. Well yes. Yes he did climb up on this motorcycle all by himself.
I think Angel and Caleb played this spider game about 20 times.
I already had about 200 tickets on my card to begin with (hello? frequent players card? gambling problem?) and after all of us cashed in our tickets we ended the day with a little over 900 tickets. Caleb got a big blow up hammer. Because obviously his parents don’t have a brain between the two of them. For 500 tickets Angel got a Barbie doll. I realize that we could have bought four Barbies for how much we paid for all those tickets, but hey, it was memories made, right?
Saturday afternoon we all took a three-hour nap, which hasn’t happened in a very long time. It was glorious. Saturday night we went to the family movie in the park. The move was The Apple Dumpling Game. At first the kids didn’t really seem interested and I was afraid we’d have to leave but they eventually started watching and thought it was pretty good.
Yahoo for $1 popcorn!
Angel refusing to take her picture with mama. After the 400 pictures I’d taken the past two days I guess I don’t blame her. “MAMA! Quit taking pictures of me!” Ha!
It seems unusual to me that she doesn’t ask alot of questions about her adoption. We look through her “first book”, as she calls it, alot. We had to explain again this year why we were having a forever family day. (Caleb was mad that he doesn’t get a forever family day!) I don’t know if she’s just too young to articulate her questions or perhaps she just doesn’t have any. I guess as the days and months go on we’ll address it as it comes.
Angel’s forever family day 2011 was alot of fun and hopefully lots of memories were made. We are so thankful for our girl!
Today is Angel’s Forever Family day!
My mom said to be the other day, “so many dates to remember.”
So I’ll review:
October 24th: her birthday
December 17th: the day she was legally ours to adopt
December 21st: the day she came home
August 27th: the day she legally acquired our last name and became a part of our family forever
We don’t really celebrate December 17th or the 21st, except in our hearts. But her birthday of course and the day she was final final final ours we do celebrate!
This year we are celebrating with not one, but two trips to a local water park. We are also attempting to go camping for the first time with the little ones. Ok, I can’t lie. We have a cabin. But that’s close enough to camping for us at this point in our lives. And then we’re not sure what the rest of the weekend will bring but I will be sure to share photos and great memories with you!
Thanks for loving our Angel.
We love you baby girl. You are our Angel sent from heaven and we cherish each day the Lord gives us with you.
I’ve been contemplating, drafting and re-drafting a post on adoption for awhile now as I struggle with some parenting issues with Angel. I’ve been re-reading my adoption books and praying for extra patience and wisdom.
This parenting thing is so hard. Going through years of infertility you have this hope and dream and vision of being a mom. And then when you are a mom, it feels like someone played a practical joke on you. Don’t get me wrong now. It’s amazing and wonderful and so amazing. But it’s hard. And then you throw adoption in the mix and you have doubts and fears and worry. I guess you have that even without adoption. But then you throw people like messed up old me in the mix and some days it feels like there’s no hope and why does it have to be so overwhelming?
The thing that’s really frustrating is that you get tricked into believing that everything might be related to adoption. Her words, her actions, problems, issues, this and that. Is it attachment issues? Is she afraid of us leaving her because she was left? Is she angry because she was adopted? Are her sleeping issues related to being adopted? When will she start asking about her birth mom? It seems never ending. Yes, there are some serious issues there that’ll we’ll have to deal with. But it can be so overwhelming wondering and worrying about it.
But even in just the past few days I’ve been realizing a few things.
1. Kids are kids are kids. I need to quit over analyzing everything but for me that’s hard. Thankfully, as I talk to other moms I know I’m not alone on that. I need to daily remind myself that so much of the “issues” that we are dealing with are just normal stuff. The challenge of course if not knowing for sure if it’s “normal” but I guess that’s where the over analyzing comes into play. And it also emphasizes the importance of making connections with other moms (and maybe even more so “older” moms who have been there, done that) to encourage and uplift one another in this journey.
2. I’m the one with issues (ya think?). It’s not about my kids. It’s not about my husband. While it’s easy to just put the blame on them or others, what I need to do is focus on me and my issues and how God wants to change and mold me. And as I’ve realized that the past few days, I’ve already noticed a huge change in my kids. Imagine that. When I radiate God’s love more, they in turn feel God’s (and my) love more and can allow it to overflow in their lives.
And sometimes frankly they just eat too much sugar and are little monsters because of it.
Even with me focusing on God changing me, there are still hard days when I don’t know left from right or up from down (perhaps too much sugar?). Praise God that even when the days are long and hard and I don’t think it can get any more overwhelming, there is hope. Praise God I’m adopted. I’ve been adopted as the daughter of the Most High. I’ve been made new, been given hope and each day is a new day. It’s a new day to love and learn and mess up and be forgiven and begin again. And it’s a new day to be an encourager to some other mom out there, and pray for that in my life!
Praise God for this journey and how He is molding and shaping me along the way. Oh how I long for the hope of Christ to overflow in my life every single day.
Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. Psalm 25:5
